Wolfgang Krege grew up in Berlin, where he began his philosophy studies at the Free University of Berlin during the early 1960s. He worked as a lexicon editor, copywriter and reader. Since 1970 he worked as a translator for numerous publishing groups, too.[1]

The first of Tolkien’s books Krege translated, was The Silmarillion (Das Silmarillion1978). His new translation of The Hobbit was published 1997 (Der Hobbit oder Hin und zurück). With his knowledge of J.R.R. Tolkien and his works, he wrote the encyclopaedia Handbuch der Weisen von Mittelerde in 1996 and an Elvish dictionary, called Elbisches Wörterbuch, in 2003.

In 2000 his most discussed translation was published, a new German rendering of The Lord of the Rings (Der Herr der Ringe), to replace Margaret Carroux’ earlier translation. Krege tried to render the original language styles into German equivalents and to make the translated text, in his view, more vivid and easier to understand for younger readers. This worked mostly, but major points of critism of his translation were that he used the different language styles in a too inconsistent way and that he chose the German of the early 1990s, including various slang words of this time.[3][4]

Wolfgang Krege was married to the German editor and translator Roswith Krege-Mayer.[1]